by Chuck Tyrell
Gid Rockwell said nothing. He held the strange knife at his side naturally taking no defensive stance.
Bowman grinned. He saw a man that didn’t know the first about fighting with knives. “Black man, you’re good as dead,” he said, and lunged at Rockwell, intending to plunge his Bowie into his belly and rip it upward toward his heart. But Rockwell pivoted and his black duster billowed. Bowman’s razor-sharp Bowie ripped through the black fabric, then the duster twirled around Bowman’s knife hand, pulling him off balance. He staggered to Rockwell’s body mass. Rockwell’s odd knife sliced across Bowman’s left bicep, and blood sprang out, flying in large drops to splash down upon the killing ground.
“You cut me!” Bowman hollered. He scuttled away and was able to get out of knife range only because Rockwell let him go.
“Come, badman. Come, leader of the Shadow Box Gang,” Rockwell said. He crooked a finger at Bowman as if he were some kind of servant boy. “Come on,” he said. “Cut me if you can.”
Bowman circled. Blood soaked his shirtsleeve and dripped from his left hand’s fingers to spot the ground.
Rockwell still stood nonchalant, knife held lightly in his right hand, but every muscle in his body was ready. This was the man who led the rapists of Mercy Taylor. This was the man who led others to misuse a married woman and kill her unborn child. This was the man who shot and killed Harlan Taylor, who bore no weapon, and he had to atone for those crimes with the blood of his body. Rockwell glanced at Matt Stryker, half-naked and bloody as he was.
Bowman sprang again, bringing his Bowie in a slicing motion meant to disembowel Rockwell.
The man in black pivoted out of the way again and sliced Bowman’s face with the razor tip of his strange knife.
“Damn!” Bowman wiped at the cut with the sleeve of his shirt. It came away bloody. “Dammmm ya!” He could work his mouth to curse, but stained and yellow teeth showed through the two-inch hole in his cheek. Blood continued to flow, dripping from his chin to splotch the front of his shirt. Tears came to his eyes. “Ya cud mi agin,” Bowman whined. His mouth didn’t form the words right.
“Then cut me, son of Satan,” Rockwell said. He shook his head. “Son of Satan, hear me. No longer shall you prey on the weak and helpless. No longer will you beat and kill for pleasure’s sake. Son of Satan, this day will your blood cry from the soil, cry to the Lord Almighty for atonement for your sins. Cry in salt-filled drops as the tears for your burden of sin.” Rockwell’s eyes blazed like he was some kind of bible prophet, like Moses, who parted the Red Sea, or Elijah, who called down fire from heaven.
Bowman shook his head. “No ya don’, black mun.” He dropped his Bowie. “Ah won’ fight ya.”
“Then I shall chop you apart, piece by piece, until your blood atonement is complete.”
Bowman continued to shake his head back and forth. He raised his hands. “Ah surrendah, lawrmun. I surrendah. Ya can’ kill mi ’f ah surrendah.”
Rockwell took a step forward and made a sweep with his knife. The steel of the blade passed through Bowman’s right arm two inches above the wrist. The hand flopped to the ground, and blood fountained from the stump.
“Ma han!” Bowman screamed. “Gone!” He dropped to his knees and clutched the severed forearm with his blood-smeared left hand. The fountaining blood slowed.
Chapter Fourteen – Blood Atonement
Rockwell went to Matt Stryker and cut the rawhide strips that bound his hands and feet. Stryker stood with hiss help. They ignored the mewling Bowman.
“That’s a fine knife you have, Gid,” Stryker said.
“Ya don’t see these around,” Rockwell said. “They’re called kukri, and this one comes from someplace called Assam.”
“Reckon I oughta look for my clothes?”
“Go ahead. I’ll keep an eye on the badman.”
“I get my duds on and maybe we should see what we can do for him.”
“Let ’im bleed.”
“I’m asking you, Gid. We do for him what we can, and take him back to Silverton. If this country is to grow up, we’ve got to do things by the law.”
“The law of God wants blood for sins as foul as what he’s done,” Rockwell said. “He went and killed a tiny little baby what couldn’t defend itself. He’s got to pay for that sin with his life’s blood. All of it.”
While they looked for Stryker’s clothes, they talked about what to do with the mewling Bowman, who clutched his right arm in a death grip with his left hand.
“Aha.” Stryker spotted a shirtsleeve poking out from under a large rock. He moved the flat piece of sandstone and uncovered a shallow pit stuffed full of his clothes. Moccasins were at the very bottom. Stryker cracked half a smile. “Not gonna have to walk all the way to Silverton half nekkid after all,” he said.
“I brung your speckled horse, Stryker. You don’t gotta walk at all, even if you’re nekkid.”
Stryker struggled into his clothes. The movement opened one of the cuts on his chest and blood spotted through the shirt. Once he’d shoved his feet into the moccasins, he went to Bowman’s bay, unhooked his Remington and gun rig from the saddle horn, and slung the gun around his hips.
Bowman sat on the rocky ground, rocking back and forth, blood still dripping from the stump of his right arm. Flies swarmed over the wound, and he did nothing to shoo them away. High above, zopilotes already circled in the dawning sky.
“That badman’ll be flyblown before the day’s out,” Rockwell said.
“We can move now,” Stryker said.
“You’ll want your hat.” Rockwell pointed at a boulder standing beside the cleft in the wall. The brim of Stryker’s hat stuck above the top the huge rock.
“Hmph,” Stryker said. He went to Speckles and got his lariat. He shook out a loop and lofted it up and around the hat. He pulled on the lariat and the hat came fluttering to the ground. Stryker picked it up and slapped it against his leg to get the dust off it. He put it on his head, slanted somewhat. “Lump on my skull fits better if I tip the hat a bit,” he said.
Bowman had gone silent. He sat hunched over, his head hanging nearly to the ground. Flies covered the bloody stump, scrambling for blood. Stryker picked up his neckerchief and snapped the dust from it. He stepped around Bowman and knelt in front of him. “Find me a six-inch stick of some kind, would ya, Gid?”
Rockwell said nothing, but took out his kukri and headed for the nearest Utah juniper.
“Bowman, I’m gonna tie off your arm. Hear me?”
Bowman said nothing, but it seemed he gave a tiny nod.
Stryker took Bowman’s neckerchief and folded it lengthwise four times. Bowman didn’t seem able to raise his head. “I’m gonna do it, Bowman. Let go of your arm.”
Bowman shook his head.
“Here’s your stick.” Rockwell held out an inch-thick piece of raw juniper with the bark shaved off.
“OK. You hold onto that arm. Squeeze hard so the blood can’t pump out. Ready?”
Rockwell pulled Bowman’s arm out of his death grip and clamped a hard hold on it, about six inches above the stump. Bowman groaned.
Stryker brushed the flies away, laid the folded neckerchief over the stump, pulled its ends down tight, and tied them with his own rolled-up neckerchief. He slipped the stick Rockwell brought under his neckerchief and twisted it once, then again. He watched the pad over the stump for a moment, then tied the stick off. “You’ll not bleed to death, Bowman, but you may hang.”
Stryker’s posse rode into Moapa with Bowman hanging onto his life. Rockwell led and Comstock rode second. Bowman was limp, almost as if he were asleep. He was tied to the saddle to keep him in place. Stryker brought up the rear. He chose the long way around through Moapa to Silverton because Rockwell would leave the posse there and because they were less likely to run short of water on the longer route.
Hardly had they passed the first farm than people began to gather. “Gideon Rockwell,” people said. And some said, “the avenging angel.”
&n
bsp; The posse stopped in front of ZCMI just as they had when they brought Mercy Taylor to town. At least fifty citizens of Moapa crowded around the posse.
“Who’s that on the bay horse, Brother Rockwell?” the question came from a gray-bearded man, but everyone in the crowd wanted to know.
Gideon Orrin Rockwell dismounted, looped the reins over the hitching rack, and climbed the three steps to the porch of ZCMI. He held up his hands and the crowd went silent.
“Brothers and sisters,” he intoned, sounding more like a preacher than a gunman. “A few days ago, an outfit that called itself the Shadow Box Gang killed some people in Silverton and robbed the McQueen Bullion Room of sixty pounds of gold.”
The crowd murmured at the mention of so much gold.
“As you all know, that same Shadow Box Gang happened on Harlan and Mercy Taylor’s place as they was makin’ their getaway. They killed Harlan dead and did unspeakable things to Mercy.”
The crowd rumbled again. Stryker could hear them saying “Godless creatures” and “the devil’s spawn” and “God smite him hip and thigh.”
Rockwell held his hands up again. “Brothers and sisters. The Shadow Box Gang is gone. Each of that ungodly bunch now stands before God to answer for his sins.”
A man in the crowd pointed at Bowman. “Who’s that?” he said.
“That is Cahill Bowman. He calls himself the boss of the Shadow Box Gang.”
“Shed his blood,” the man shouted.
“Listen to me!” Stryker said. His voice stilled the crowd as they saw he wore a star. “My name is Matt Stryker and I’m deputy marshal of Silverton. This man,” he gestured at Bowman, “crucified our marshal, a good man by the name of Walt Nation. He took Walt’s daughter Elly and a woman named Maggie Brown, and all the gold in McQueen’s bullion room.” He looked from face to face. He saw decent people who were angry. Like Rockwell, he held up his hands.
The Shadow Box Gang is gone, except for this man. You folks live by the law of God and your prophet, but we all have to live by the law of the land if our country is to grow up.”
The crowd murmured. “Shed his blood,” came a short from somewhere in the back of the press of people.
“Listen!” Stryker said, and the authority in his voice stilled the crowd, “this man, this Cahill Bowman, will stand before judge and jury … in Silverton.
“Can we get that doctor to have a look at Bowman’s arm?” Stryker question was directed at Gid Rockwell.
“I reckon,” Rockwell said. He singled out one in the crowd. “Brother Hunt, could you ask Brother Wilson to come? Stryker wants him to look at the stump of the outlaw’s arm.
“What for? That there outlaw never ever looked out for nobody but hisself.”
Stryker spoke. “If he dies, he’s escaped his punishment. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
The man Rockwell called Brother Hunt ducked his head. He sidled out of the crowd and ran off up the street.
“Fletch,” Stryker said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m hankering for a can of peaches.” Stryker stood in his stirrups and dug into his pants pocket for some coins, He held them in his open palm. “Two cartwheels and a half dozen two-bit pieces. I reckon you can get a couple of cans of peaches, a hunk of bacon, and some hardtack. We’ll ride straight through to Silverton after the doc’s had a look at the Bowman’s arm.”
Comstock held his hand out for the coins. “I’ll do it,” he said. He dismounted, climbed the steps, and made his way into the general store.
The man called Brother Hunt came back with Brother Wilson, the town doctor, in tow. A woman with a bonnet hiding her face and her hands tucked under her apron followed the men. Perhaps she was curious about what drew such a large crowd.
“Let me see the arm,” Wilson said.
“Have at it,” Stryker said.
“I’ll need him off the horse. Get him up onto the porch, if you please.”
Stryker and Rockwell hoisted Bowman from his bay horse, hauled him up the steps, and laid him on the wooden planks of the porch.
Wilson took a look at the neckerchief bandage Stryker had put on the stump. “Likely saved his life with that,” the doctor said.
“Mlgfng,” Bowman said.
The woman came up the steps. “You were the first,” she said to Bowman. A M1847 Whitneyville-Walker Colt .44 came out from under her apron, cocked. She shoved it out in front of her as she came. “You were the first. You killed my Harlan, and you killed my baby. God, dear God, have no mercy on this man’s soul. I have none.”
Two inches from Bowman’s face, the massive Colt roared, and sent a .44 caliber lead ball smashing into the orbital bone of his right eye, through the gray mass of his brain, and out the left side of his skull just behind his left ear, narrowly missing Gideon Rockwell’s foot.
In the shocked silence that came after the shot, Mercy said, “There, Brother Rockwell. He’s paid with his life’s blood. But I can’t say God rest his soul.”
She turned the M1847 Colt around and grasped it by its octagonal barrel. She offered it to Matt Stryker. “I killed him, Marshal.”
“Yes, Mercy Taylor, you did. A clear case of self defense.”
Epilogue
Stryker was writing a report on his posse’s ride for Clark County Sheriff Virgil Donahue when Onzel Wilkinson stuck his head in the door. “Walt wants to see you,” he said.
“Writing a report,” Stryker said.
“Walt wants you, man. Get your cracker-ass over to Doc’s place.”
Stryker sighed. “All right.” He plucked his hat from its peg and buckled his Remington gun rig around his hips. He patted the badge on his vest. “Let’s go,” he said.
Walt Nation had survived crucifixion and disembowelment by the Shadow Box Gang. Doctor Smithson’s timely use of carbolic solution disinfectant had surely kept him from getting peritonitis, which is the real killer in abdominal wounds. And the marshal still occupied one of the rooms in Smithson’s small clinic. When Wilkinson and Stryker entered the room, Walt Nation was propped up in bed.
“You’re looking good, Marshal,” Stryker said.
“Thanks for leading that posse, Matt. You did a bang-up job.”
“Not so good, Marshal. We lost Jimmy the Kid Leslie and Dred the Seminole. A good posse don’t lose men.”
“You’re too hard on yourself, Matt. Not a person in Silverton that doesn’t think it was a good job. Besides, getting Kid Leslie home and going back to bury Dred and get the tack and so on from the horses was first rate. McQueen tells me he only lost one ingot of the gold the Shadow Box Gang took.”
“What do you really want, Walt? You didn’t call me over just to talk about the posse. It’s over and gone. That said, when are you going to get back on the job?”
Nation was silent.
“So, what do you want, Marshal. What can I do for you?” Stryker said.
Onzel Wilkinson spoke up. “It’s gonna be a long while before Walt can get around, much less be a lawman. After talking it over with him, the town council decided to ask you to take Walt’s place as marshal of Silverton.”
“Obliged if you’d do that, Matt,” Nation said. “You’ve got what it takes, and you led that posse right smartly.”
Matt Stryker stared at the floor. He couldn’t say anything. The dead bodies of Kid Leslie and Dred the Seminole were lodged in his mind. Time and time again, he went back over what the posse did, trying to see if there could have been a way to do things so those men would not have died. He’d gone back to Dead Man’s Notch from Silverton. Gone back and … .
“Well, Matt. What do you say? Can you take over and do the job for me?” Nation said. “And for yourself?”
Stryker still said nothing. He raised tortured eyes to look at his friend and mentor. “I don’t measure up,” he said at last.
Nation smiled. “None of us do,” he said. “But your posse showed that you’re willing to try. That’s what it takes, son, the willingness to try. Do it, Ma
tt. Please.” Nation held out his badge. “Make this your own, your very own. From this day on, Silverton is Matt Stryker’s town.”
Stryker ignored the outstretched hand. “If there’s a swearing in or something, would you mind if I rounded up my posse?”
“Good idea,” Onzel Wilkinson said. “Who do you want?”
“Fletcher Comstock, Cap Grant, Maggie Brown, Elly Nation, Milt, if she’s around somewhere. Oh, and Weldon Higgins.”
“You wait right here. I’ll have ’em back in a couple of minutes.” Wilkinson went out the front door and strode down the street.
“Mind if I sit down?” Stryker said.
“Chair right there,” Nation said. “Pull it over here.” He motioned at the side of his bed. “Let me talk to you about this job.”
Almost an hour later, Wilkinson threw the front door open. “They’re here,” he shouted. “Maggie, Elly, Milt, Cap, and Weldon. Fletcher Comstock’ll be here as soon as he can lock up the bullion room. Stryker’s posse came in and lined up around the room, their faces covered with grins. A moment later, Comstock entered. “Over there,” Wilkinson said, pointing at the end of the line.
“Ahem.” Wilkinson stood in the middle of the room. “Matthew Stryker has agreed to become the marshal of Silverton,” he said, “and he requested that his posse, including Elly Nation, be here for his swearing in.”
Wilkinson said, “Matt, if you’d raise your right hand.”
Stryker did as he was told.
“Matthew Stryker, do you solemnly swear to perform the duties of city marshal to the best of your ability and understanding, in accordance with the laws of Nevada and the ordinances of Silverton, so help you God?”
“I do,” Stryker said.
And his posse broke into applause and hoots and shouts of congratulation. Stryker ducked his head. He looked over at Walt Nation, who sat up in his bed. “It’s all your fault, Walt. Look what you roped me into.”
“That is not true, Matt Stryker,” said Maggie Brown. “We’ve been on the trail with you, and not a one of us would hesitate to go again. Anytime.”